Lyon Don R, Gunzelmann Glenn, Gluck Kevin A
L3 Communications at Air Force Research Laboratory, 6030 South Kent Street, Mesa, Arizona 85212-6061, USA.
Cogn Psychol. 2008 Sep;57(2):122-52. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.12.003. Epub 2008 Mar 7.
Visualizing spatial material is a cornerstone of human problem solving, but human visualization capacity is sharply limited. To investigate the sources of this limit, we developed a new task to measure visualization accuracy for verbally-described spatial paths (similar to street directions), and implemented a computational process model to perform it. In this model, developed within the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) architecture, visualization capacity is limited by three mechanisms. Two of these (associative interference and decay) are longstanding characteristics of ACT-R's declarative memory. A third (spatial interference) is a new mechanism motivated by spatial proximity effects in our data. We tested the model in two experiments, one with parameter-value fitting, and a replication without further fitting. Correspondence between model and data was close in both experiments, suggesting that the model may be useful for understanding why visualizing new, complex spatial material is so difficult.
可视化空间材料是人类解决问题的基石，但人类的可视化能力受到极大限制。为了探究这种限制的根源，我们开发了一项新任务来测量对口头描述的空间路径（类似于街道方向）的可视化准确性，并实施了一个计算过程模型来执行该任务。在这个基于思维自适应控制-理性（ACT-R）架构开发的模型中，可视化能力受到三种机制的限制。其中两种（联想干扰和衰退）是ACT-R陈述性记忆的长期特征。第三种（空间干扰）是由我们数据中的空间邻近效应激发的新机制。我们在两个实验中对该模型进行了测试，一个实验进行参数值拟合，另一个实验是无需进一步拟合的重复实验。在两个实验中，模型与数据之间的对应关系都很紧密，这表明该模型可能有助于理解为什么可视化新的、复杂的空间材料如此困难。
